Topic: Shipping Economic Impacts

St. Lawrence Marine Corridor infographic.

ECAs are established by the IMO to limit emissions from ships in coastal areas. In North America’s ECA, ships must burn fuel or scrub exhaust to emit a maximum of 0.1% sulphur content since January 2015.

Regulations have positively impacted air quality in Canada with the majority of air pollutants decreasing significantly since 1990.

Canadians feel the economic impacts from all sources of air pollution, including lost productivity; increased healthcare costs; decreased quality of life; stunted crops, plants, and trees; and discoloured and damaged outdoor structures and materials – all of which costs Canadians and the Canadian economy billions of dollars per year.

Distance 1 tonne of cargo can travel on 1 litre of fuel in Canada’s Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway.

Fuel lifecycle climate warming impact. When comparing the CO2-equivalent emissions of different fuels per 1 tonne of cargo transported 1 km by ship, the climate warming of LNG exceeds that of heavy fuel oil when the amount of methane slip from LNG use is greater than approximately 1% of the volume of LNG.

LNG & Marine Shipping: LNG ships are made with many safety features. These include insulated tanks and double hulls. The LNG tanks can be rectangular or round, spherical in modern LNG carriers.

The lifecycle of LNG involves extraction from the ground, removal of impurities and gases and then it is shipped through a pipeline to a liquefaction facility and stored in an LNG tank for shipping. It’s processed upon arrival.